Adrian Michaels is Group Foreign Editor at the Telegraph Media Group. You can write to adrian.michaels@telegraph.co.uk and follow @adrianmichaels on Twitter.

Silvio Berlusconi and the Animal Farm defence

An Italian court is set to rule soon on whether the Italian prime minister’s latest efforts to alter judicial procedure and laws in his favour is legal.

Silvio Berlusconi has decreed that the holders of the most senior posts in government cannot be prosecuted while in office. He argues that the relentless persecution under which he labours, born of a biased judiciary, prevents him from acting in the best interests of the country that he has been elected to run. He is obliged, in other words, to spend so much time conferring with his lawyers, that he can barely concentrate on affairs of state. He does, one might point out, seem to have plenty of time for completely extracurricular activities, as highlighted by his complaining wife and her request for a divorce.

Of course Berlusconi’s stance means that the numerous legal cases pending against him – alleging serious and serial wrongdoing in his business and political affairs – are on hold. It is not, argue his lawyers, that Berlusconi considers himself above the law. “The law is the same for everyone,” one was reported to have said yesterday, “but not in its application.” It’s all very Orwellian, underscored by the reports from Rome that the prime minister argues that he is “first above equals” rather than “first among equals”. In other words then, he actually is above the law, but only while he holds a post that allows him to be so.

That post, however, is not conferred upon him by the Italian people. Italians do not elect their prime minister any more than do Britons. They vote for parties, who in turn select their leader.

But that has not stopped Berlusconi seeming to view parliamentary democracy as a personal affair. Unusually for lawmakers in mature Western democracies, he has a history of having laws passed seemingly framed expressly on his behalf, or on behalf of his businesses, friends or associates. One may cynically conclude this informs us why he entered politics in the first place.

The Italian judiciary are far from innocent in this saga. They have concluded that the wheels of justice turn so slowly – a bribery case against Berlusconi’s company has just concluded about 19 years after it started – and that their chances of conviction so slight given the way the laws are changed by an interfering political class, that their only recourse is the court of public opinion. Prosecutors therefore routinely hand entire caseloads of private documents and wiretaps to the press, which of course print them. Reputations are ruined without any chance of defence and without proper due process.

Berlusconi is right to argue therefore that the judicial system needs reform, and the poisonous relationships between the media, judiciary and politicians need fundamental change. But his remedies strike me as self-serving and inappropriate. I don’t think he has the best interests of his country at heart.